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Proof that an exciting concept is not enough to build a movie off of when you forget to populate with something beyond stimulating visuals. Loving Vincent is more of a film’s theory than an actuality, and it borrows artistic ambition and merit by piggybacking onto van Gogh’s work. Paintings that exude vitality, life, and passion like Starry Night become merely wallpaper to a tedious story that’s an approximation of coming of age story and limp murder mystery populated by characters who exist entirely to provide biographical info dumps.
Loving Vincent is an animated film created in the style of Vincent van Gogh, combining both his own masterpieces and newly created pieces by artistic collaborators hired by the directors. If you watch the entire film on mute, then it becomes a gold star classic for the ages as it moves with large swaths of color combinations in dramatic tension or romantically sweeping across the frame. It’s the story that sinks the whole thing.
For a film titled after the genius artist, Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo exist in the film as mere concepts and not as characters. This is a pity as they are endlessly fascinating persons. Instead, we’re stuck with Douglas Booth’s Armand Roulin as he tries to deliver the last letter of Vincent’s, meets up with several people that knew van Gogh during his final days, and begins to believe in various conspiracies theories about the artist’s death. Was it a murder or a suicide? The film presents unconvincing evidence for the former before finally conceding that it more than likely was the latter.
Shackling van Gogh’s gorgeous, mysterious artwork to such a non-involving story results in a film that feels only half-formed. Loving Vincent quickly turns from glorious achievement to middling exercise to, finally, a dull copy-and-paste affair. It’s a series of beautiful images in search of a compelling story, and a compelling story was right there all along in the emotional turbulence in the brief lives of Vincent and Theo.
